I frequently tell friends, "If you don't know what my magazine is about, that's good. It means you and your family are healthy." From the patient side, the HME world surfaces from necessity. On the provider side, legislative activism comes from necessity and urgency.
With the July 1, 2008, implementation date for round one of competitive bidding squarely in the crosshairs, officials at AAHomecare (and others) felt the urgency and started a fourth quarter comeback. As I write this, implementation of round one of competitive bidding is still set for July 1, 2008. If it actually started, it was not for lack of effort.
In a year that has seen an extraordinary amount of lobbying, it would be hard to match the month of June. A Senate bill and a House bill materialized, 40 senators signed on to a letter favoring a delay, and two lawsuits were filed—all in the month of June. Providers in Florida, with the help of the Accredited Medical Equipment Providers of America (AMEPA), actually hit the sidewalks with protest signs. The limitations of monthly magazines can lead to overuse of the phrase "at press time," and that has never been more maddening now as the industry breathlessly waits for news of a competitive bidding delay. Check our weekly electronic newsletter Friday Report
All the recent help from sympathetic legislators is, of course, based on a foundation meticulously built over the past few years. After all, providers saw this coming, and the arduous—and ongoing—task of educating legislators began years ago. On behalf of all providers, the usual suspects (and you know who you are) tirelessly walked the halls of Congress, and their mission is far from over.
When I began editing this magazine in May 2004, competitive bidding was certainly a hot topic, but the urgency was not there. A quick look at the HME Today archives yields this excerpt from the August 2002 editor's message by past editor Lena Lindahl: "At 2:30 in the morning, on June 28, 2002, bleary-eyed congressional representatives eager to head home for the 4th of July recess passed the Medicare Modernization and Prescription Drug Act. … This is bad news for providers, Medicare beneficiaries, and yes, even CMS, which will have the unenviable job of reproducing on a national scale the 'savings' results of the relatively small competitive bidding demonstration in Polk County, Florida."
From those humble beginnings nearly 6 years ago, an enormous amount of ink has been devoted to analyzing, grousing, cursing, and wondering about the specter of competitive bidding. I had hoped to use this month's editor's message as a platform to deconstruct an announced delay. However, despite the outcry over the past few months, CMS and its 325 contracted medical suppliers are still set to provide medical equipment and services to more than 3.5 million Medicare patients in 10 urban areas across the country. Perhaps next month's message will yield a bit of symmetry with the announcement of a hard-fought delay— exactly 6 years after the previous editor documented the actions of "bleary-eyed" legislators. Time will tell.
Greg Thompson
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